Trump backs DOJ prosecution warning to California election officials
Trump said California officials would face jail after the Justice Department warned that processing ballots from people it flags as noncitizens could bring criminal exposure.
President Donald Trump publicly backed a Justice Department warning that California election officials could face criminal investigation and prosecution if they process ballots cast by people the federal government has identified as noncitizens. The warning, issued Friday, October 16, 2026, escalates a dispute over a federal list of roughly 20,000 people less than three weeks before the November 3 midterm election.
Trump shared the Justice Department letter on Truth Social and wrote, “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Reuters reported. The president’s statement was a demand and prediction, not a criminal charge or court ruling. No California election official was reported to have been charged in connection with the disputed list.
What the Justice Department warned
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent the letter to the Los Angeles County Counsel’s office and copied California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. According to reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press, McCotter said noncitizen voting in a federal election is a crime and warned that anyone who knowingly tabulates such a ballot could risk being treated as an aider and abettor.
The warning concerns people whom federal agencies have flagged as likely noncitizens. That designation remains disputed and is not the same as a judicial finding that each person is ineligible or that any person voted illegally. Reuters reported that Friday’s letter said the list was produced using internal immigration records and data matching.
The Justice Department’s letter followed a lawsuit filed Thursday, October 15, seeking to prevent California from counting the listed people’s mail ballots until their citizenship status could be confirmed. Federal officials had previously given the state 48 hours to review a password-protected thumb drive containing the names.
California disputes the federal list
California officials have challenged both the evidence and the demand. Los Angeles County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison said Thursday that the county could not comply because the administration had not explained how it assembled the list. Weber has said the Justice Department provided no evidence supporting its assertion that the listed people are noncitizens who received ballots.
Weber’s office referred Reuters to an earlier statement accusing the department of trying to gain unlawful access to protected voter data and purge voter rolls, actions she said would create chaos and undermine trust in elections. The county counsel, Weber’s office and the state attorney general did not immediately provide a new response to the Friday warning, according to the reports.
California sends mail ballots to all registered voters. Receiving a ballot does not establish that it was completed or counted, and being flagged through a database match does not by itself establish noncitizenship. Previous government matching systems have mistakenly identified some naturalized U.S. citizens as noncitizens, Reuters noted.
A material escalation of the dispute
The new development goes beyond the administration’s earlier deadline and civil lawsuit by raising potential personal criminal exposure for officials responsible for processing votes. The letter does not specify how many officials might be investigated or identify a completed act that prosecutors say violated federal law.
The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department has charged about 90 people with various forms of election misconduct during 2026, including 50 accused of voting as noncitizens. Those figures sit against more than 227 million registered voters in the 2024 presidential election. Studies and election reviews have repeatedly found noncitizen voting to be rare.
The immediate legal questions are now before a federal court in the Justice Department’s case. Any criminal case would require a separate investigation and prosecution, and the government would have to prove the elements of an offense. For now, California says the federal government has not substantiated its list, while Trump and the Justice Department are pressing officials not to process ballots connected to it.
Sources and image credit
Independent reporting on Trump’s statement, the federal list and California’s response: Reuters. Reporting on the October 16 Justice Department letter and its legal warning: The Associated Press via PBS News.
Image: A still from 2018 footage of vote-by-mail envelopes being sorted at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, created by Legoktm; Wikimedia Commons source record. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The still was extracted and resized to 1600×900 with no text added; it is file imagery and does not show ballots involved in the current dispute.